I had the honour of being a speaker at the Eschaton 2012 conference, organized by the Centre for Inquiry Ottawa. I submitted the topic of my address before it was written: The Importance of Secular Governance for Canada. But (as often happens with me during the creative process) the speech I wrote was considerably different than the one I had in mind before I put fingers to keyboard. I believe the new title is a more accurate reflection of the content.
Below is the speech I prepared; my actual words did not deviate greatly from the text.
Secularism Is Not Nearly Enough
What is secularism? Answering that question in the richness it deserves could fill all the time allotted for this session and then some. The Canadian Secular Alliance defines it as a political principle: government neutrality in
matters of religion. In other words, government should neither support nor suppress religious expression
among its citizenry.
As you might expect from a policy advisor to the Canadian Secular Alliance, I
agree wholeheartedly with this contention. Today I will talk about the
importance of secularism, highlight a specific Canadian policy that should be
discontinued, and then broaden my focus to encompass a much wider view of the
world. In the next fifteen minutes, I will discuss Canadian law, international
efforts that would impact all of us, and finally I hope to convince you that
secularism is a necessary, but nowhere near sufficient, principle for a just
and stable society.
To start with, let's openly acknowledge that, overall, Canada does very well on
the secular front, and furthermore, is generally moving in the right direction.
From removing restrictions on interfaith and interracial marriage to
liberalising divorce laws; from the establishment of the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms as the Constitution of Canada, thereby enshrining freedom of
conscience, to formally recognizing gay marriage as equal in all respects to
heterosexual unions; over time, we are moving more and more to a society informed
by secular values. This needs to be recognized, and should celebrated.
But we must also acknowledge that we do not yet live in a truly secular
country. But in most cases, the exceptions, though still substantial, are
rooted in tradition. Such is the case with prayers opening municipal councils;
this is still common practice across the country. The discriminatory publicly
funded school systems in Ontario are grounded in obsolete clauses in the
province's constitution. We must always remember that while freedom of speech
is a fundamental human right, freedom from offense is not.
Another historical artifact, albeit one with major consequences for Canadian
society, has to do with our charity law. According to the Canada Revenue
Agency, an organization must pursue at least one of the following four goals to
be granted the designation of a charity:
- The
relief of poverty
- The
advancement of education
- Other
purposes to benefit the community that courts deem charitable
- The
advancement of religion
The first
three items on the list are in accordance with a general understanding of the
term "charitable activities". Whether and how the last criterion
benefits society is far from clear.
A bit of history: In 1891, the British House of Lords ruled on what constitutes
a charity in a dispute between the tax authorities and the Moravian Church.
They developed a common law test, based on the preamble of the 1601 Statute of
Charitable Uses (also known as The Statute of Elizabeth). This ruling is the
basis for the Canadian government's determination of which organizations are
deemed to be charitable in nature. Perhaps it is time for Canada to reconsider
whether a decision made in the nineteenth century, itself based on the
introduction of a law more than four hundred years old, is the best foundation
for taxation practises in 2012.
Yet some traditions die hard. In a letter received by the Canadian Secular
Alliance on July 27, 2012, Jim Flaherty, federal Minister of Finance, stated
that "charitable status for the advancement of religion is based on the
presumption that religion provides people with a moral and ethical framework
for living and plays an important role in building social capital and social
cohesion."
I, for one, would challenge that presumption. In my experience, there is a high
correlation between deeply held religious belief on the one hand and opposing
the rights of women, the rights of homosexuals, the right to free speech, and
the right of freedom of conscience on the other. Furthermore, this phenomenon
is not limited to Canada - I submit that strong religious sentiment can have a
significant detrimental effect on any society, as recent decades in Ireland,
India and Israel demonstrate, to pick among countries starting with a single
letter. (It is important to acknowledge, however, that the faithful do not have
a monopoly on misogynist and censorious views that lead to social strife.)
But we are not talking about fine philosophical distinctions or abstract
positions with little practical impact on Canadian society. Mr. Flaherty’s unchallenged
assumption significantly distorts fiscal policy across Canada.
The Canadian Secular Alliance obtained from the Canada Revenue Agency a
detailed list of charitable tax deductions made in 2007. All charities must
declare what percentage of their efforts is devoted to the four categories of
recognized charitable activities. According to their submissions to the
Canadian Revenue Agency, over 26,000 Canadian registered charities did nothing
beyond promoting the advancement of religion. This is nearly one-third of all
charitable organizations in Canada! Not one of them declared that they spent
any time, effort, or money feeding the hungry or clothing the naked. In total,
they received nearly 14 billion dollars in donations in 2007, and the Canadian
government granted them tax credits of almost 1.2 billion dollars.
That is over one billion dollars every year of government subsidies for
religious proselytising. That is roughly thirty dollars for every Canadian
citizen. Either these funds are completely wasted, or they are having a
significant impact on Canadian society - though perhaps not for the better. In
either case, might these funds be redirected to serve more productive goals?
Clearly, despite the progress Canada has made, secularists still have work to
do to apply secular principles to Canadian governance, and to ensure Canadians
do not lose the freedoms we currently enjoy that stem from secular policies.
But we cannot for a moment believe that our efforts should stop at our borders.
Let us move from Canadian regulations to the realm of international law, and
attempts to codify freedom from offense as a global norm. The Organization of
Islamic Cooperation has been agitating in the international community for over
a decade to ban speech offensive to Muslims.
Of course, the question is not whether there should ever be restrictions on
expression. No country provides for completely unlimited free speech. Even the
United States, with its famous First Amendment, has several significant
limitations on expression - the canonical example being that it is illegal to
falsely yell "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theatre.
Most people support the principle of placing limits on unfettered speech. Some
widely accepted examples include limited and well-crafted laws regarding
slander and libel, truth in advertising, and uttering death threats.
Given that reasonable limits exist on speech, the question is: Do mocking
religious figures or making other blasphemous utterances fall outside the
bounds of acceptable expression?
No.
The attempts of the OIC to classify satire as hate speech, and related efforts,
have impacts on Canadians just as much as arguments within our own parliament.
We cannot be blind to them.
Similarly, secularism itself is not a default position for democratic nations.
Though it has not been used in decades, Canada still has a blasphemy law on the
books, punishable by up to two years imprisonment. In 2009, Ireland passed a
law that makes "Publication or utterance of blasphemous matter" an
offense subject to a maximum fine of €25,000. The Arab Spring is replacing
several autocratic regimes with democratically elected illiberal Islamist
governments. There are many and complex factors behind the fact that dictators
were generally more secular than their elected replacements - but the point is
if we truly respect freedom of conscience as a fundamental human right, there
is much work to be done in the world.
Certainly one's ire should be raised when religious dogma is upheld in
the face of contrary evidence, or when governmental policy is used to buttress
the faithful of one creed at the expense of those belonging to other groups.
But religion is far from the only example of ideology trumping facts.
And many of the most pressing issues facing our world today have nothing to do
with religious zealotry or a violation of secular principles.
Though some religious folk may
welcome the rapture and thus dismiss climate change, humans are cooking the
planet with our ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, especially
carbon dioxide, almost entirely for secular reasons: an all too familiar litany
of fear, economics, political expediency, and human short-sightedness.
The 2008 financial meltdown had everything to do with greed and fraud. Wall
Street made huge profits not by increasing efficiencies, but by maximizing
economies of externalities. A greater commitment to secular principles, if
possible, would have done nothing to avert or reduce the impact of the real
estate and financial crash.
The economic crises facing the EU and soon Japan have nothing to do with undue
religious influence in the halls of political power.
Our current agriculture and animal husbandry practices are almost perfectly
designed to evolve a superbug that could wipe out a significant portion of
humanity entirely for the most secular of reasons.
Since the first human evolved, plant and animal species have been going extinct
at an unprecedented rate.
We have polluted huge swathes of the earth's land and water to such an extent
that significant areas our planet's surface are inhospitable to any form of
life.
Little (if any) of this damage was done with religious motivations at its core.
None was committed violating any secular principle.
So although secularism is important - and more than that, I believe it to be
essential - it is also not enough. Not nearly enough, not by a long shot. Many
of the key crises we face today as a species, as a global society, have nothing
or at most little to do with religion. Secular governance is nowhere near
enough to produce peaceful, stable, sustainable societies.
We should not waver for a moment in our commitment to secular governance. But
we should also not forget for a second that there is much else that needs our
attention as well.
We must resist ALL dogmas, whether they be religious, economic, political,
philosophical, or scientific. All areas of human endeavour are open to
scrutiny, question, and refinement.
Furthermore, no single approach works across all domains.
Science would fail miserably if its findings were subject to a majority vote.
Peer review would be a horribly inefficient way to run a corporation.
Unregulated capitalism has proven to be a dismal failure if environmental
protection and sustainability is a desired outcome.
Yet in their appropriate domains nothing we have tried as a species to date has
surpassed democracy, free markets, and peer review.
Consider this: maybe there is something better that we simply haven't tried
yet. At a minimum, we need to be open to the possibility, or else this - what
we see today, here, now - is as good as it gets. Even more, as good as it can
get. And I, for one, emphatically do not believe this to be true.
Let our legacy be that we bequeath upon our collective descendants a better,
more just, more sustainable world than the one we inherited from our ancestors.
Thank you.
